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Healthy Communities and Chronic Disease Prevention Project and Survey

The Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition (OHCC) is collaborating with three other provincial healthy community networks on a national project called “Healthy Communities: An Approach to Action on the Determinants of Health in Canada”. The goal of the project is to demonstrate that using a Healthy Community approach is an effective way to address chronic disease prevention in Canada.

The aims of the project are to:

Assess the impact of using a Healthy Communities (HC) approach in chronic disease prevention (CDP) and to address the broad determinants of health

Identify measures of success and best practices for HC initiatives in terms of research, policy and practice

Raise awareness of the benefits of using a Healthy Communities approach to mobilize and empower communities around chronic disease prevention strategies

Collect and disseminate tools and resources to assist community coalitions to develop and implement HC & CDP initiatives

Establish and manage a Canadian Healthy Communities network as a vehicle for knowledge dissemination and exchange through its members and by linking with many other networks

Recommend research and policy directions to advance knowledge of effective chronic disease prevention strategies in a community setting and mechanisms for achieving optimal results

As part of identifying measures of success and best practices for HC initiatives in terms of research, policy and practice, an online survey has recently been developed. This short survey has been designed to help us learn about Healthy Community initiatives in Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick and British Columbia. Specifically, we hope to learn about the types of projects that communities are undertaking across the country, and the processes that they use to achieve their goals. Survey results will help us to both learn from, and better support, the communities that we serve.

Following this survey, we will be interviewing representatives from a few of the Healthy Communities initiatives in each province in more depth. This survey, and the interviews, will help to inform the process for selecting potential case studies for the project.

If you are part of a Healthy Community initiative, would like to provide information for our research, and also benefit from the results of the project, please complete the survey at the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SV6S8ZW by Monday September 20th at 5pm.

For more information about the project, or the survey here in Ontario, please contact:

This project has been made possible through a financial contribution from Health Canada, through the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and their CLASP – “Coalitions Linking Action and Science for Prevention” Initiative. The other networks involved in the project are: